Our new reality

I rolled out of bed about 6:55am this morning, not before mindlessly checking Instagram, scrolling through story after story with every ad either targeting me for home gym equipment or hand wash. I’m not quite ready to declare myself ready to tackle the day, that’s correct. I need to refresh my Twitter feed first. Luckily, after a few more wasted minutes of letting my brain get hijacked by people arguing on the internet, mindless behaviour becomes mindful behaviour. Next up on my morning schedule is a 10min guided meditation and my 16th straight day of the Wim Hof breathing exercise, more on that later. 

It is now decision time. Do I sit down at my desk and invest another 20-30mins into myself by completing another lesson in the online speed reading course I’m taking or do I celebrate the little wins I’ve had already this morning and reward myself with a coffee now? It’s time to celebrate. 

Next decision. What time is it? 7:30am. Okay, the decision is taken out of my hands, Maccas drive-through coffee it is. The cafe across the street with much better coffee than Maccas doesn’t open till 8am. 

Tapping into an evolving, almost near paranoid framework that has been building consistently in my mind, I assess what ‘tools’ I need to complete for the drive-through coffee run. It doesn’t feel as stressful as preparing to go to my local cafe where I physically have to exit my car and walk into a bricks and mortar store with other humans lining the street outside the cafe, or heading to my local IGA supermarket for that matter. 

I grab my car key, my house keys, my phone, my debit card (no wallet) and a small portable bottle of hand sanitiser.  

There are three critical junctions when ordering through the Maccas drive-through. First, the pay window. Second, the collection window. Third, how you treat your item/s when you bring them back into your house. 

On this trip, I execute a ‘hover and go’ flawlessly in step one. There’s no tap, we don’t want to tap, we want to hover and hear the beep. Next window, the Maccas employee is friendly as we exchange pleasantries and proceeds to hand me my medium sized latte. My eyes lock in on a potential red flag. He is holding my coffee on the lid with his gloves, right by the little hole where you drink from. I’m going to have to address this back at my place. 

The coffee remains untouched in my cup holder as I pull into my garage, I take the coffee to the kitchen and think of ways to sanitise the lid and cup where it’s been touched by another human. Firstly, I sanitise my own hands with the readily available sanitise station I have set up on my kitchen bench. 

Next, I take off the lid and run hot water and dishwashing liquid over it, then wipe it down. That should do it, let’s finally take a sip. Hold up, I don’t think dishwashing liquid is going to do the trick, round two. I pump some alcohol sanitiser on a paper towel and clean the lid and cup again, then it’s back under the hot water and I muster the courage to take a sip. It’s got sugar in it, ahh man, all that effort and it’s the wrong order. And why didn’t I just drink it without a lid? Hindsight hey. 

It’s Easter Monday, 13 April, 2020. How did I... no, how did ‘we’ get here? 

To provide an answer would be condescending. The coronovirus or covid-19 or SARS-cov-2 or whatever you want to call it has been the biggest collective talking point in my lifetime no matter where on earth you’re situated. 

For the past month and a bit, it’s been flat out terrifying at times. From the images we’ve seen around the world, to the headlines we’ve read, to the staggering case numbers skyrocketing, the world has been tipped on its head. To even think back six weeks ago, feels more like six years ago, at minimum. 

The morning of my birthday, March 11, I woke up and got a takeaway coffee from my local cafe which has subsequently closed. I prepared breakfast and sat down at my dining table and opened the YouTube app. Up pops a 15min video from the Joe Rogan Experience “How serious is the coronavirus?”. 

About 2mins into the video, I have a sinking feeling in my gut. As the video goes on, I’m experiencing really high levels of cognitive dissonance. I’m thinking, “This thing isn’t going away, I’m meant to be on a plane to the U.S. and South America in four days.” It hasn’t been a good start to my birthday. 

Up until this point, yes, I have heard about the coronavirus and have paid some attention to some headlines but the honest truth is I’d been looking for headlines that suited the narrative I wanted to paint. That narrative was that there’s nothing really to worry about and if I get whatever this ‘flu thing’ is whilst travelling, I’ll be okay. My own GP in the weeks prior had shared a similar view when I was going in for required vaccinations for the South America component of my trip. 

By Thursday, 12 March, the trip was cancelled or ‘postponed’ as I was calling it at the time, grasping onto some hope it would happen again soon. The feeling surreal comes to mind on this particular Thursday, a feeling that has almost become ingrained into us all over the past month as we’ve been met with surreal moment after moment on a daily, and even hourly basis. 

Standing in my living room with ESPN on the TV, I see images of NBA games being called off just before tip-off, cancelling games half-way through and the news breaking that Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert had tested positive for coronavirus. The NBA season is now suspended. Wow! My mind is racing. Wasn’t I meant to be going to a bunch of games. Next up, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have tested positive on the Gold Coast. Next up, Trump shuts U.S. borders to all European countries except the U.K. What is happening? 

Thursday afternoon, I have a scheduled GP appointment. What was meant to be my last consultation prior to departing to discuss malaria tablets, turned into a very real conversation around coronavirus as hysteria and panic had started to seed itself through Australian society. My GP’s view was now heavily in the reconsider your travel plans corner. 

The next few days were spent trying to cancel bookings and going very deep into content on the virus from trusted sources I’ve listened to for years, primarily through podcasts. I probably consumed 10-15 hours of dense content in a few days and I didn’t like where I thought things were heading. 

Fast forward a month and the world is almost unrecognisable. We’ve seen and experienced: 

• Heart wrenching stories of people around the world being taken too early from the horrible virus. 
• Doctors and nurses on the frontlines putting their lives on the line to save people in their communities. 
• Staggering numbers of new cases skyrocketing in nearly every corner of the globe. 
• Supermarket shelves being stripped bare as panic kicked in that the apocalypse is coming. 
• Marked out distances with tape on the floor and protective shields at check out points at supermarkets to protect both supermarket employees and their customers. 
• Sport banning fans from attending professional games. The NBL decided to cut its five-game grand final series short after game 3. The AFL played round 1 with no fans and by Sunday of the very first round, suspended the season. 
• Arbitrary numbers put in place to build a temporary societal framework to operate in continued to be reduced. No gatherings over 500, 100, 50, 10, 2. 
• Businesses forced to shut. Anything from restaurants to pubs to gyms to cinemas and plenty more. 
• Instant job losses and reduced hours for millions around not only Australia but a huge chunk of the world. 
• We’ve been given four reasons and four reasons only to leave the house (essentials i.e. groceries, exercise, caregiving and work, if necessary). 
• Businesses that can operate with employees working from home are on the most part doing that. 
• Black markets created for items like hand sanitiser, face masks and regular hand wash.
• Stock market spirals as the economy grinds to a halt. 
• The emergence of the ‘house party’ app. 
• Peers of mine (and me) gearing up for a big Saturday night in front of their screens at home as DJ John Course plays a live set on Facebook Live from his living room.
• The introduction of the ‘JobKeeper’ government scheme in an attempt to weather the storm for Australians. 
• Banks offering up to six months mortgage repayment deferrals.
• Home gym equipment almost rivalring hand sanitiser as the hardest item to source in this new world. 
• At least three of your friends telling you ‘why didn’t we listen to Bill Gates in 2015?’ 
• Workouts at home on Zoom or Microsoft Teams with regular gym goers and even work colleagues.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I almost feel a sense of ignorance. How was I still contemplating getting on a plane 72 hours prior to my scheduled flight on March 15? The truth is, I didn’t even know what a ‘pandemic’ was. If you were to run an implicit association test on me in February this year for a reaction to hearing the word ‘pandemic’, I probably would have responded with “bad” but I actually had minimal grasp of the concept. 

This thing caught us off by guard, I think it’s fair to say. But as we all learn from this, again, in hindsight, we’re all asking the question why it took so long to act and for the penny to drop for society. 

For the first few weeks on from my birthday, I let the fear and panic sweep me up. Everything I was accustomed to was on fragile ground. I was worried about everything, both in my own little world with my closest loved ones to a much broader macro level. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say, I made many more phone calls, texts, and whatsapp messages than usual. 

I was looking at the live dashboard of coronavirus cases built by Johns Hopkins University daily and sometimes multiple times per day. I was going down the rabbit hole on Twitter, reading article after article and even consuming some mainstream TV news services, something I generally don’t pay a lot of attention to. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually regret this at all. I was hungry for useful information as I tried to piece the jigsaw together in my overstimulated head. 

What I recognised though is it wasn’t sustainable. At least not for me personally. I was finding myself in anxiety driven spirals in a time where it’s deemed even more advantageous to be in optimal health. My daily habits were being counterproductive. 

My intention of this piece is not to downplay the magnitude of the very real consequences, pain and suffering that is occurring all over the world. I’m deeply concerned and continue to be concerned. I’m worried for everyone around me and the toll it has had, and will continue to have on the world for years and decades to come. It’s somber to say the very least. 

Where I want to take this as I finish is how we adapt and build resilience to our new reality. No one asked for this new reality but we haven’t got a choice right now. Where we do have a choice is how we think about our new reality and how we spend our time in physical isolation, whether that be by yourself like my own situation or whether you’re cooped up with your family or housemates. 

We know for most of us that are not on the frontline in the medical field or providing essential services (and a huge thank you to those heroes) that the best thing we can do is stay at home to stop the spread and to buy more valuable time for our amazing scientists that are working around the clock to develop treatments and a vaccine. 

I’m trying my best not to sound ‘preachy’ as you can find plenty of material all over the web if that’s your gig but how are we going to spend our time? As cliche or bordering corny to say, if we reframe this situation as something we’ve been gifted rather than something that’s been taken from us, I think you’ll find yourself seeing the situation we’re in through a different lens. 

I heard a great line on a podcast I was listening to earlier today that asked the question “How can you make the next 3-6 months something you look back upon as a sacred time that you really treasured?” This might seem a little far fetched for some and that’s perfectly fine but if we are able to put the health fears of the situation to the side just for a minute, the question might be helpful. 

So what am I doubling down on at this time when I’m not working my traditional job from home: 

• Learning to cook more and become efficient at it - a working progress I must say. 
• Taking a speed reading and comprehension online course (I’ve already doubled my words per minute in a week). 
• Finding creative ways to come up with my own home workouts. In the last week or so, it’s become more usual than unusual to have friends or colleagues on a video conference call as we synchronously sweat it out. 
• Learning the art of negotiation on the Masterclass series. There’s over 80+ classes and world class instructors on here. If you’re interested, I took up a 2-for-1 annual membership offer with a friend of mine. The deal is still running but be warned, get ready to be retargeted on Facebook and Instagram like never before :) 
• Continuing my meditation journey. I’ve been on this journey for a few years now, probably close to five but observing the mind during this period is more crucial than ever. I currently use the Waking Up app but have also used Calm and Headspace for extended periods. They’re all great in their own ways. If you’ve never given meditation a shot or want to cut through the ‘woo woo’ perception you might have, check out this 20min podcast. 
• Participating in the Wim Hof method 40 day quarantine challenge that involves breathing exercises and cold showers. 

Of course, there is some more traditional ‘fun’ interwound in there, whether it’s Zoom parties, Narcos Mexico on Netflix or the final season of Silicon Valley (shoutout to RussFest). 

Do I have a bit too much time on my hands? Yep, you’re probably right but this is the whole point! 

I want to reiterate, my thoughts do not come from a place that is dismissive of the level of hurt the virus is causing. The fear is very real and remains very real for me personally. As much as I want to remain calm and positive, when we come out the other side, there could be a reality where someone I know has been taken by the virus. That is a proposition I’d prefer not to think about nor even write but it must be acknowledged. I hope this isn’t the case. 

I’m glad I’ve got to a point that I don’t feel frozen or like a deer in headlights anymore. It’s time to get to work. 

If you’ve resonated with any of my words or feel like you’re on a similar wavelength, shoutout, I’d love to connect. We all need to have each other's backs in these times. 

Thanks for reading.